The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow battled her way into Oscar history books on Sunday, topping her movie’s best film honor with her own Academy Award for directing to become the first woman ever to earn that distinction.
The low-budget film, which has earned US$20 million at box offices, picked up six awards in all and bested Avatar, directed by Bigelow’s ex-husband James Cameron. Avatar is the top-grossing movie of all time with US$2.5 billion.
In a ceremony that harkened back to old Hollywood with glamour, music and comedy, the gritty drama about a squad of bomb-defusing specialists also secured writer Mark Boal the Academy Award for original screenplay and claimed honors for film editing, sound editing and mixing.
“This really is, there’s no other way to describe it, it’s the moment of a lifetime,” said Bigelow. Backstage, she told reporters that she hoped she was only the first of many women directors to win an Oscar.
Boal highlighted the struggle to make the movie when only a few years ago in Hollywood money for such true-life drama was hard to find after audiences turned their backs on war films.
“This has been a dream, beyond a dream,” said Boal, a journalist who was embedded with US troops in Iraq.
At best, he said, the film’s makers hoped “we would find a distributor and someone would like the movie.”
Avatar walked away with three Oscars, but in technical categories — visual effects, cinematography and art direction.
FAMILY NIGHT
Veteran Jeff Bridges claimed best actor for playing a drunken country singer in drama Crazy Heart. The son of Hollywood star Lloyd Bridges held his trophy high over his head, looking to the heavens and thanking his deceased parents.
“Mom and Dad, yeah,” he shouted. “Thank you Mom and Dad for turning me on to such a groovy profession.”
Sandra Bullock was named best actress for The Blind Side in a first for the actress once dubbed “America’s Sweetheart” because she won so many early fans in her romantic comedies.
For The Blind Side, however, she took the part of a real-life, strong-willed mother who helps take a homeless youth off the street and makes him into a football success.
“Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?” she joked on the Oscars stage.
She held back tears when thanking her own mother, whom she called “a trailblazer” and major influence in her own life.
“To the moms who take care of the babies, no matter where they come from. Those moms never get thanked,” Bullock said.
Family film Up, one of the best-reviewed movies of 2009, won two Oscars for best animated movie and original score with its tale of an elderly man who ties balloons to his home and flies off on an adventure with a young boy.
Dark drama Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire also earned two Oscars including best supporting actress for Mo’Nique and, in another piece of Academy Award history, adapted screenplay for writer Geoffrey Fletcher, who became the first African American to claim that honor.
LOOKING BACK
Mo’Nique told reporters backstage that in her hair she wore the same gardenia Hattie McDaniel had when she won supporting actress in Gone With the Wind — a trailblazing win because it was the first ever Oscar for an African American.
“I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all she had to so that I would not have to,” Mo’Nique said on stage.
Austrian actor Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for his turn as a menacing Nazi officer in revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, which follows a band of American Jews killing their enemies behind lines during World War II.
But it was the only trophy Quentin Tarantino’s Basterds could claim after being the second-most nominated movie with eight nods to nine apiece for Hurt Locker and Avatar.
Oscar organizers promised a fast-paced show with lots of laughs from co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. And after an old-style musical from Neil Patrick Harris with showgirls and men in tuxedos and tails, Baldwin and Martin put on a stand-up routine picking out stars in the audience.
“There’s that damn Helen Mirren,” Martin said.
“No Steve, that’s Dame Helen Mirren,” Baldwin came back.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your